I. Ambiguity (ambiguous) Grammatical Struc- - Ramkhamhaeng University

I. ambiguity (ambiguous) The general sense of this term, referring to aWORD ORSENTENCE with expresses more than one MEANING,is found in LINGUISTICS, but several types of ambiguity are recognised.The m’ost widely discussed type in recent years is grammatical (or structural) ambiguity. In PHRASE-STRUCTURE ambiguity, alternativeCONSTITUENT STRUCTURES can be assigned to a CONSTRUCTION,as in new houseadshops, which could be analysed either as new[houses and shops] (i.e. both are new) or [new houses] and shops (i.e.only the houses are new). In TRANSFORMATIONAL ambiguity, the alternative SEMmC representations can be shown only by relating theambiguous sentence to different structures. For example, visiting speakers can be awful is relatable to either it is awful to visit speakers WIIOvisit are awful. A sentence with more than two structural interpretations is said to be multiply ambiguous. An analysis which demonstrates the ambiguity which does not arise from the grammatical analysisof a sentence, but is due solely to the alternative meanings of anindividual LEiXICAL ITEM, is referred to as lexical ambiguity, e.g.I found the table fascinating (-‘object of furniture’ or ‘table of figures’cf. POLYSEMY). In recent semantic discussion, a distination is sometimes drawn between ‘ambiguity’ and ‘vagueness’: an ambiguoussentence is formulated as having more than one distinct structure; a vague

a set of lexical items is synonymous. For example, in the context Whata nice--of flowers, the items range, selection, choice, etc. are synonymous; but in the context His--of knowledge is enorznous, only range canbe used., along with a different set of synonyms, e.g. breadth. Synonymyis distinguished from such other sense-relations as ANTONYMY,HYPONYMYandINCOMPATIBILITY.41. truth-conditional semantics An approach to SEMANTICS which maintains the MEANING can be defined in terms of the conditions in the realworld under which a SENTENCE may be used to make a true statement.It can be distinguished from approaches which define meaning in termsof the conditions on the use of sentences in communication, such as the.function of the sentence in terms of SPEECH ACTS, or the speaker’sbeliefs about the sentence (cf. PR‘4GMATICS).42.utterance A term used in LINGUISTICS and PHONETICS to refer toa stretch of speech about which no assumptions have been made in termsof liquistictheory (as opposed to the notion of SENTENCE, whichreceives its definition from a theory of GRAMMAR). In principle, it isa physically definable, behavioural unit, capable of definition in everyday terms. One commonly used definition refers to ‘a stretch of speechpreceded an followed by silence or a change of speaker’. But it hasproved very difficult to construct a satisfactory definition. The definitionjust given, for instance, applies equally to a one-word response and asermon, and attempts have been made to produce more restricted definition, rrsing such features as PAUSE, RHYTHM, breath patterns, PITCHmovement, etc. The analogous term in the study of writing is TEXT.L1313183

I. ambiguity (ambiguous)The general sense of this term, referring to a WORD ORSENTENCE with expresses more than one MEANING, is found in LINGUISTICS, but several types of ambiguity are recognised. The m'ost widely discussed type in recent years is grammatical (or struc-tural) ambiguity.In PHRASE-STRUCTURE ambiguity, alternative